


Speaking in Tongues

by Boji



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-17
Updated: 2003-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-01 10:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/355781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boji/pseuds/Boji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS: The Pilot & various references from the entire first season. Blink and you might miss them though :-)<br/>SUMMARY: Two conversations. Two friendships.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Speaking in Tongues

It wasn't speed that was the attraction. Well, not the main one. It was the momentary feeling of freedom Lex got as he eased the car into a different lane, opened the throttle and pulled away from the traffic crawling uniformly around him. With the top down and the Ferrari itching to be airborne, Lex felt free. Momentarily, he could fool himself that he was just like any other spoilt, moneyed brat. Young and privileged. Focused on partying, cruising, scoring and little else. No responsibilities other than to over-extended deadlines. Nothing to worry about but papers and mid-terms, and not even that. 

As Lex switched gears and the tall, towering skyline of Metropolis receded into the distance, he tried to imagine how it would feel to be truly carefree. Not to have to conform to a pre-selected image, not to have to fit into a certain mould. He'd always had to be Lionel Luthor's progeny. Always the prince in waiting. Never just the boy, or now the man. He'd twisted and contorted himself almost out of existence to try and fit the mould; to try to make his father 'see' him. But that was before. Before he'd tasted freedom, however briefly. 

Harvard had allowed him twenty four scant months of freedom. Seven hundred and thirty days on a voyage of self discovery that had ended abruptly in blood and hot stinging pain of a knife wound. His father hadn't seen his pain or his wounds. All his father saw was the lover's spat he'd inadvertently got caught in. All his father saw were supressed headlines screaming that the prodigal son got knifed in a gay club. Other sons were gifted with hugs of support. He'd been given a lecture on his perversions. Acidic, angry words that had hurt as acutely as his stitched lip and bandaged hand. That night, Lionel Luthor's indifference had congealed into distaste and disgust that no longer tried to hide. Ostracised and relocated, Lex knew that he was worse than damned in his father's eyes; he was a disappointment. 

On nights when Lex sat in his darkened office, watching the tectonic shift of global stock exchanges from his glowing flat-screen window, he wondered if he'd always been a disappointment. Wondered if it was innate. Wondered if his father had seen his seeded flaw even as he'd struggled to take his first steps and form his first words. Had it been as obvious then, as his baldness was now? Was this why he'd been damned to reach out for love and receive only cool indifference? He was flawed, just like one in ten men in America. His particular 'imperfection' congealed in the heat of the 'nature versus nurture' debate. Flawed and trapped behind the PR image of the ideal son being groomed to take over the empire. The ideal son planning to follow or usurp his father. Lex was planning the latter, but it was increasingly out of self preservation. Not that he thought anyone would believe him. Well Clark might, but then again he'd believe anything anyone told him, at least at first. 

Clark. 

Lex sighed and looked at the clock on the dashboard. He'd gone fifteen minutes without thinking the boy's name, although he couldn't remember if that was an improvement on his last pathetic record. 

Irritated with himself, he pushed his foot down on the accelerator and let the car fly past the blurring scenery. Soon there'd be corn fields and wheat fields and the numbing blandness that was rural life in Smallville. Bland only if one closed one's eyes to the strange happenings that reared their ugly heads on an almost weekly basis. It was like being a recurring extra in a season of the X-Files back in the day when the show was good. Back when Mulder wore red Speedos and climbed out of the pool wet and dripping in-front of gorgeous rat bastards. Lex grinned to himself wondering what Clark might do if he called him 'tovarich' and kissed him on the cheek. 

Friendship. Despite all of Lex's unrequited longings, he was still Clark's friend. Despite the twisted machinations that filled his days and might have made Clark doubt him, Clark still considered him to be his friend. 

Partnerships and acquaintanceships were a learned skill. Boarding schools fostered team spirit and competitiveness and those were skills Lex had honed to perfection. Those skills, along with a thorough understanding of Machiavellian tactics, had led to his first small victory against his father. He'd spent the long ago subsequent summer with Bruce in the Hamptons. Two months of freedom. Two months not acting as his father's understudy. It had been his last summer of innocence, a summer of sailing and sports and laughter that had little to do with his later discoveries of the fencing instructors' washboard abs. Little to do with a world unfolding in the words of Virgil, Martial, and Catallus. Little to do with poetry, Byron and Wilde. 

Friendship to Clark was simple, straight forward and charming, like the boy himself. Yet Lex couldn't shake the feeling that behind the wide eyed look he was so often graced with, were a host of secrets. David Lynch had been right about the darkness at the heart of suburbia. Clark's eyes were too shadowed for his blindingly wholesome image to be real. And then there was the matter of Lex's ventilated Porsche. 

As Lex turned off the highway and began driving past the sea of wheat, his cell-phone rang. Casting a quick look at the number he punched the answer button with a grin and adjusted the ear piece in his left ear. 

"Hello, Bruce." 

Closer than a best friend, Bruce Wayne was his brother in spirit, if not in blood. It was Bruce's staunch friendship that had made boarding school more than bearable. It was he who had first taught Lex that true friendship was even possible. Bruce who'd stood up for him, stood by him and even renamed him. 

"Alex, I heard the wanna-be black widow was in town, why didn't you call me?" The voice was warm and friendly and more than a little amused. 

"Why? You suddenly interested in Victoria?" Lex paused as Bruce laughed down the phone. 

"Hardly, caustic-slut isn't my type. And I know it isn't yours." 

"It had nothing to do with type." 

"So why?" 

"It seemed expedient at the time." 

"No one interesting in that backwater wilderness?" 

"I wouldn't say that." Lex trailed off, hoping in vain that Bruce wouldn't go fishing. 

"Which means there is." 

"Bruce." Lex could hear the retiscence in his own tone. 

"Well, that at least explains why you fell off the face of the world. I was worried, Alex." 

"You thought Daddy dearest was rivalling Joan Crawford in a display of good parenting skills?" Lex asked bitingly, hating the fact that he'd unwittingly worried Bruce. 

"Wouldn't be the first time." 

"I've been exiled to Elba, remember? Out of sight, out of mind." Lex said only half in jest. 

"Your father's an asshole." The words were spoken flatly and factually. 

"Thank-you." 

"No, thank you. It's at times like this that I realise my parents might not have turned out to be saints if they'd lived." 

"You don't have flexible tastes." Lex spat the words out. 

"What's the worst thing that your father could do to you if you came back to Metropolis and embraced the counter culture?" 

"Ah" Lex grinned wryly. "God knows. Siberia nice this time of year? Bruce, I don't know, sometimes I think he might turn me loose on Luthor Corp special projects and transmute me into a tragic, martyred guinea pig. James Dean, but bald and not as cute. The much beloved late heir of the great industrialist." 

"Live fast, die young and stay beautiful." Bruce quipped. 

"I was fifteen and an idiot when I thought that. Believe me, totalling the Porsche dissuaded me of that notion." 

"This, despite the angel that saved you?" 

"Angel?" Lex asked cautiously. 

"We spoke; you were off your face on Demerol. All you talked about was a blue eyed angel." 

"Shoot me now." Lex groaned, thankful that in the middle of nowhere the car could pretty much drive itself. He was far more focused on the conversation than on driving, which was why he didn't notice the mounting turbulence sweeping through the sea of wheat to his right. 

"This angel, does she have a name?" Bruce paused momentarily and with the sound of a grin in his voice, continued: "Alex, does he have a name?" 

Stillness and uniformity buckled under an unnatural force, ripping through the perpendicular crop. Sheaves of wheat bent and bowed, as a gust of wind cut a path through the field. 

"Clark." 

A dust storm hit the windows of Lex's Ferrari and littered the leather upholstery. The rush filled roar shook the car slightly, drowning out Lex's reply. He slammed on the breaks, wondering if he'd imagined the red and dark blur that had streaked past him. 

"Clark?" He spoke the boy's name softly, calling, questioning the phenomenon that had appeared out of nowhere. "Bruce, I've got to go. I'll call you later." 

"Alex, what's going on?" The worry was back in Bruce's tone. 

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Half the time I don't believe it myself." Accelerating fast, he chased the wheat flattened trail; chased his hunch. "Bruce, I promise, I'll call you later." 

Pushing the 'end' button, he cut off all external distraction and pushed the car to its limits, driving into the dust and the face of the wind. 

It was Clark. He didn't know how he knew, but Lex was positive. He didn't care why Clark was cutting a swath through the wheat fields at supersonic speeds, but just as he knew in his gut that the blur etched on one frame of the security video from the Metropolis museum was Clark, he knew this was too. Suddenly, as abruptly as it had flared up, the wind died down. 

Lex slammed the breaks on. Not wanting to overshoot what might prove to be the eye of the storm, he turned the wheel so that the car skidded in a circle. It came to a stop in much the same position as before. His heart thudding in his chest, Lex ran his hand nervously over the bald nape of his neck and waited. 

As he watched, the still curtain of wheat parted slightly and Clark walked forth. His dark hair was tousled and dressed in his customary blue jeans and jacket, carrying his red battered backpack, Clark looked as if he was on his way home from school. Three hours later than normal. 

"Clark." Lex nodded in greeting and watched as his young friend tried to hide the worry in his eyes with a wide and not too genuine smile. 

"You practising to be a stunt car driver?" Clark asked, trying and failing to be nonchalant as he walked up to the side of the car and scuffed the threshed wheat with the toe of his sneaker. 

"Rally driver." Lex grinned. "No really, I wanted to run away from home and push cars to their limits on muddy dirt tracks. What you running from?" 

"Who said I was running?" 

"Wild guess." Lex said, his eyes lingering on Clark's dark hair, littered as it was, with wheat germ and dust. 

As the setting sun came out from behind a cloud Lex caught himself thinking of halos and swallowed a giggle. Bruce would find this hilarious. If Lex told him, that was. If he found a way to explain why he was hanging out in the middle of a deserted field at sunset. 

Clark shrugged. "Ever feel your skin's too tight? I mean, I don't mean your skin, I just? Ever feel that you're boxed in?" 

The fustration that was choking him was all to evident in the tenseness of Clark's body. 

"Been there, done that," Lex said, thinking of each and every day throughout his childhood and far too many days currently. Looking at up at Clark, he saw the smile fade, the hand fiddling with the backpack strap and softened his tone. "I know the feeling well." 

"Only it's like your box has invisible walls and moves with you kinda, so that people don't see you're boxed in?" The words spilled forth from Clark in a rush, as if he were unable to contain his thoughts for a moment longer. 

"Cages of the mind." Switching off the ignition, Lex opened the driver's door and stepped out. He stretched and moved round to perch on the hood of the car. 

Clark was watching him warily, his head bowed slightly, his lips pursed. Focusing on the beautiful, skittish creature before him, Lex could almost see the thoughts tumbling in Clark's mind. 

"Yes, no." He looked up suddenly, his opening gaze pinning Lex. "Did you mean that I'm trapped in my head? I mean I'm not. That's not it. It's everything else. This pl? place." 

Clark dropped the rucksack into the dust and began to pace, evidently too keyed up to find the setting odd in any way. Then again this was Smallville, where odd was fast becoming normal. 

"Small towns can get claustrophobic. It's not quaint; it's a goldfish bowl." Lex fiddled with his keys. 

"Which can get to be a pain if you're not a goldfish and everyone else is, or expects you to be." Clark paused and turned to stare straight at Lex. 

"Clark, all teenagers feel as if they don't fit in." 

"Speaks the oh so old man at the ripe old age of twenty-one." A bright grin momentarily eclipsed the worry that had been etched on Clark's face. 

"Yeah well?" Overtaken by the urge to cup that beautiful face and kiss Clark none too gently, Lex kicked himself. Toothpaste, that smile had to remind him of toothpaste commercials, not kisses. 

Shrugging, Lex waited for the stream of consciousness rant to continue. After all, that was what friends were for. And they were friends, despite the fact that his fingers sometimes itched to run their way through Clark's glossy hair, or reach down to cup one perfect globe of the boy's jean encased ass. Not that he ever would. The stakes were too high, the boy's open, sunny friendship too precious to risk. 

"And it's not just the not fitting in. It's more like? Ever felt you were a tropical fish in a pond with goldfish? Ever felt that you couldn't be a goldfish, no matter how hard you wanted to?" Clark's earnest tones were matched by the look in his eyes. 

"Got to be true to your scales, huh?" Lex said slowly, trying to read between the layered images, wondering what Clark was really getting at. Wondering, with a sudden wild thud of his heart, if they might just be on the same page. 

"Yeah, only in my case if people find out I'm not a goldfish they're liable to think I'm a piranha." Clark's blue eyes darkened as he peered at Lex and jammed his hand into his jean pocket nervously. 

"I thought that was my label around here." Lex spoke slowly, trying to read Clark's body language and deciphering nothing but the all too obvious anxiety. 

"Nope, you're just devil spawn, or if Chloe gets hold of the theory, probably a mutant fish." Clark was smiling again, moving closer to the car, perching next to Lex on the hood and looking luminous. "So did you ever feel you were a ? tropical fish?" 

"Are you asking me if I have a love for warm climates and bright colours?" Clark's leg brushed against his momentarily and Lex could hear the suddenly hoarse tone creeping into his voice. 

Clark's breath smelled faintly of spearmint. Lex wondered if he could lean over and steal a kiss before Clark pushed him off the bonnet of his car and onto his ass in the dust. 

"Clark, everyone feels as if they're different. Everyone wants to conform and fit it, it's part of growing up." 

"And what if you can't? What if you know that you're?" Clark paused struggling to find an alternate word for different, and turned to face lex. "Other?" 

The word was breathed out as a loud whisper, and biting his lower lip slightly, Clark lowered his gaze. 

Lex's heart was thumping so hard in his chest he was sure that Clark could hear it. "And it's this otherness that has you running through the fields in the early hours of the evening?" 

With his head bowed, it seemed to Lex as if Clark was staring intensely at Lex's right hand, as he fiddled with the car keys, tapping them against his thigh. 

"Finished my chores. I just couldn't hang out round the house tonight, that's all." Clark shrugged, still looking down. 

Lex wondered for a crazy moment if Clark was actually checking out his package, felt himself harden slightly at the mere idea and shifted restlessly on the hood of his car. 

"Clark, I don't know why you think I'm such a fount of wisdom. Business strategy I can do. This?" He paused. "If you're saying what I think you're saying, then this is a part of life I'm just figuring out." 

"Being? different?" 

The crystal blue, wide-eyed gaze had Lex pinned once again. He had to physically stop himself from leaning in and closing the distance between them, had to stop himself from thinking about Clark's mouth, about Clark's pouting bottom lip? 

"Yeah, being different." Lex knew he sounded as if he'd swallowed a frog. Breathing in, he straightened up and tried to focus on something other than kissing Clark senseless. "?although in my case it got me sent to the boonies." 

"This is something to do with your wild and dangerous past." 

Lex laughed despite himself as his hardening, throbbing cock reminded him that, ironically, his exile was as much to do with the present moment as with anything he might have done in the past. 

"It's all about spin. In some people's eyes, I was wild and dangerous. Bruce would say it was a cry for help or attention." 

"Who's Bruce?" 

"A friend." 

His only other true friend. If Clark was a true friend. If Clark could even be his friend considering how much Lex's desire complicated everything. 

"Like Victoria?" Clark sounded terribly young and insecure suddenly. 

"No, Bruce is nothing like Victoria. Actually he's more than a little like you. Too good to be true, with a host of skeletons in his closets." 

"Lex, I don't have any?" 

"Closets?" Lex knew he was pushing an envelope Clark probably didn't even know was there, but he couldn't help himself. 

"Skeletons." 

The intense and serious blue gaze was back and Lex wanted nothing more than to drown in it, or to put the glint of laughter back in Clark's eyes. 

"Sure Clark, just like Smallville's a nice normal farming community where nothing weird ever happens. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt." 

Denial. That was what it was all about. Lex denying his burgeoning feelings for Clark, Clark hotly denying he had anything to hide and the whole town denying that they were all forever changed by the meteor shower that had rained down twelve years earlier. 

"I? I have to go." Suddenly awkward, Clark slid off the hood of Lex's Ferrari and picked up his backpack. 

"It's late." Lex said, cursing himself from mentioning the whole mutant conspiracy theory that Chloe subscribed to. 

"Yeah. It is." Lex watched Clark scuff his sneaker toe in the dirt. "Lex, thanks for listening." 

"Anytime." As he breathed the word out Lex knew he meant it without reservation. "You want a lift home?" 

"Nah, I can walk from here." 

Shrugging his backpack higher on his shoulder Clark turned and vanished into the wheat. Lex climbed off the hood of his car, got in behind the wheel and turned the ignition on, gunning the engine. As he turned the headlamps on, he could once again make out the fast rippling waves in the wheat field. 

"Anytime Clark, anytime at all." 

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: They belong to DC Comics, The WB Television Network & the counter-cultural zeitgeist. Not mine, never will be. No infringement of any copyright is intended.
> 
> NOTES: I want to thank Hannah for her beta skills. Her encouragement was pivotal. Her punctuation skills invaluable. If there are any floating commas anywhere blame me. As Hannah said _Boji's a Brit_ so let's hope we haven't missed any stray British-isms. Yes Hannah I did change the bonnet into a hood.


End file.
